Sport-utility vehicles, minivans, and other crossover vehicle designs often include second or third row seats which may be adjustable from a seating position for accommodating passengers to a stow position to provide cargo space.
It is often desirable to provide a relatively low load floor height to minimize the lift height of objects loaded into vehicles. It is also often desirable to maximize potential vehicle cargo volumes. A further vehicle design objective also often includes minimizing or eliminating angled and or multi-leveled load floors that might result from folding auxiliary seats to their stow positions.
It may also be desirable to minimize the gap between the rear edge of the load surface of the seat when it is folded into the load position and the adjacent edge of the load surface located immediately rearward of the folded seat.
It may also be desirable, for seats employed in second row applications, to provide the seats with the capability of performing additional folding, sliding, tipping, or other articulating functions to temporarily provide additional ingress/egress space for occupants accessing a rearward row of seats.
Existing auxiliary row seats often include articulating mechanisms which re-position the seat cushion and associated support frame (together, “the seat base”), such as, for example, by moving the seat base forward and/or tipping the forward end of the seat base downward, to allow the seatback to achieve a more flattened and/or lower position when the seatback is folded forward over the seat base.